etid sort of
printers' ink, but by vile advertisements, whereat the physical
nostrils, indeed, are not offended: but the moral nose is in great
indignation.

An obscure and narrow street through which few respectable persons, and
no ladies, ever pass, bears a scandalous name, and is considered a
disgrace to the metropolis, by reason of the sort of literature
displayed in its windows, which is precisely of the same quality as the
advertisements alluded to; and these, in the columns of reputable and
even "serious" journals, get introduced into families, and lie about the
house, to attract the notice, and obtain the perusal, of the younger
members of the establishment, male and female.

You may take up--or what is of more consequence--your little boy or girl
may take up--a newspaper, and read, on one side of it, a leading article
which might be preached out of a pulpit: on the other a series of
turpitudes unfit for utterance under any circumstances.

These atrocities are heightened to the point of perfection by the
circumstance that they are the puffs of a set of rascally quacks, not
the least mischievous of whose suggestions are the recommendations of
their own medicines--poison for the body which they vend to simpletons,
whilst they disseminate mental poison gratis, both in the advertisements
themselves, and in books which form the subject of them, in addition to
the other poison.

As the newspaper-proprietors whose journals are sullied by these
putrescences may be of opinion that the odour of gain, from whatever
source derived, is agreeable, and, therefore, preserve them as rather
fragrant than otherwise, the following exhortation has been addressed to
their customers:--

"It rests with you--with you alone, newspaper readers, to stop the
torrent. And you can do it, without expense, and with but little
self-denial. Let each individual that receives this appeal write
without delay to the editor of the paper he reads, whenever he sees
it defiled by one of these easily-recognised advertisements, and say
that, unless its insertion is discontinued, he cannot, in
conscience, any longer patronise the publication. Whatever your
station may be, you can do something; and the higher it is, the
greater is your influence and responsibility. On country gentlemen
rests mainly the persistence of the evil in provincial papers; they
can, and we trust they will stop it. Let, too, each one o